Before I took over as owner/operator, my Assisted Living (AL) homes would purchase their groceries at a couple of different locations IE. Costco, Sams, Fresh Foods, ext.—load their cars with bundles of bags stuffed full of food items. It took most of the day to drive, pull, and load/unload the weeks’ worth of food for just one home.

I quickly realized this process was not efficient, and I didn’t want to spend the day in grocery stores. They may have been saving a little money doing this, but paid it all back full in labor/time. I have since stream-lined the grocery shopping process. I have three different homes within a 10-mile radius. However, this system can work for several homes or just one.
I reached out to a local grocery store (Maceys) and met with the manager to see if he would be interested in supplying my food. He was eager to serve. I laid out the parameters and requirements I would need from him.

My AL managers would go through the next week menus and use the Grove menu print option to list food items. Once the items were inventoried for the next weeks’ meals they separated the food-list by column—Produce, can goods, breads, cleaning supplies, ext. and sent an email with the menu list attached to the grocer.

The grocer then pulled all the items—yes, there was some early challenges with the right type items, but after a few weeks we were on the same page—and the orders had very few minor mistakes. After pulling the items the grocer rang them up and boxed them in preparation for pick up.

Oh, it doesn’t end there for me. I asked my grocer to pull all three homes groceries the same day and place them in hard plastic bins (which he purchased) and stack them in my enclosed trailer (about 24 bins) which I had previously left at the store. I would then arrive at the designated time--charge the items on an account, and head out to the homes for delivery.

This process has been really smooth. The only way it could be smoother is—if I didn’t do the pickup and delivery myself. However, I figure my delivery efforts have saved me approximately $9,600 per year. And kept my total food costs hovering around $5.15-6.75 per resident per day.